


Memento Mori

by Taba



Category: Hololive, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Death, Temporary Amnesia, Tsunderes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taba/pseuds/Taba
Summary: Calli's overseen Kiara dying a million times, but she's never seen her lose herself quite this badly.An amnesiac phoenix, a workaholic reaper, a mandatory vacation, and maybe a little emotional support (not that Calli would ever admit to doing such a thing).
Relationships: Mori Calliope/Takanashi Kiara
Comments: 9
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

It's a bad one this time. 

By now, Mori Calliope is well familiar with the process of death, having handled it for centuries on end. Now that she's risen all the way to becoming Death's apprentice, she's tasked with managing all of the more complicated deaths that can't be handled by the average reaper: reincarnation, certain ritual sacrifices, soul-affecting magic, time paradoxes, eldritch reality warping, and so forth. 

Among these complications, one Takanashi Kiara has the dubious distinction of having developed probably the most complex process of them all. Phoenixes in general were an affront to the strictly linear processes of death, considering how fundamentally intertwined with life they were, but Kiara took it to an entirely new level. Somehow, she'd managed to come up with a method to channel her own death throes into a dimensional travel spell, violently ejecting her soul from the dimension she was in and hopefully escaping whatever could keep a phoenix down. From the perspective of the psychopomp, the whole process tended to involve a lot of paperwork and departmental politicking as they tried to figure out who was doing what, not to mention the typically incredibly lethal side effects of a very magically potent soul punching a hole through reality. From the perspective of the phoenix, it was traumatic enough to disrupt the soul momentarily, which generally resulted in some temporary memory loss as she reconstituted herself. 

Thus, when Calli sees that Kiara has just died, she immediately delegates her current tasks to some of her own students and heads over to handle the situation herself. There's always something special that needs to be done when it comes to Kiara, whether that's resolving a dispute about jurisdiction, pulling the souls of her attempted killers out of the phoenix fire, or even repeatedly reaping her as the other universe tries to assert a new set of physical laws on her reassembling body. It'd be a lie to say that she looks forward to it, per se, but it's always a break in the day to day routine it's so easy to fall into.

As soon as she arrives, though, Calli can tell that something's wrong. Usually, the phoenix is almost aggressively chipper, bouncing all over the place even without her memories and getting annoyingly personal with the reaper. This time, though, Kiara is much more subdued. Calli first notices it in her eyes, which are unfocused and staring vacantly at the empty space in front of her, but the more Calli looks the more she sees how her entire body just seems tired, slumped down into her seat like a - like a corpse, really. She looks down at her tablet - the log is vague as always, but there are alarmingly many events logged, all of which could have possibly killed her. The reaper assigned did their job properly, but Calli still can't help but feel a little frustrated at the lack of detail. 

She shakes her head at how wrong the sight of such a dispirited Kiara feels, then materializes in the holding room. The girl in question barely even moves her head in acknowledgement, although her eyes do focus on her. Calli can't quite meet her gaze, though, and she fiddles with her tablet to buy time. All sorts of nasty scenarios start forming in the back of her imagination, but she suppresses them with a barely audible grunt. 

There's somewhat of a procedure to these meetings, one hashed out through hundreds of repetitions, and it's those procedures that she leans on to get started. "How much do you remember?" she asks with professional detachment. It's a little rude, from what little Calli understands of the etiquette of mortals, but Kiara never really seemed to mind. In fact, she seemed to find it endearing, although the reaper could never quite figure out why, and teased her about it frequently. Given that Kiara doesn't have any real memories whenever they meet, she ends up repeating the same dozen jokes, but Calli can't find it in herself to be annoyed. 

"... My name is Takanashi Kiara." Kiara's listless voice breaks up Calli's reminiscing with its insistent wrongness. "I… I'm dead, aren't I?" she asks. 

Calli nods, stowing her tablet away for now and pulling the scythe off of her back. It doesn't feel nearly as comfortable in her hands when killing isn't what she wants to do, but she brandishes it symbolically anyways. "Yes. I'm your reaper, Mori Calliope." 

Too late, she realizes the implication of those words, but Kiara's too out of it to pounce on the verbal slip-up like she normally does. Calli almost wishes she would. "I'm a phoenix, though? Shouldn't I be resurrecting..." Her words are slow and sound almost as if she's trying to convince herself that they're true.

"Yes, but it takes time for your reincarnation cycle to complete. It's also my job to send you back when your soul is ready." Some fairly core memories were disrupted, from the look of things. Calli's never had to explain this much. 

"I see..." Kiara frowns. "I don't remember much else. Just… there was someone important to me, I think."

After a short pause, Calli nods in acknowledgement. "That's fine. There's no need to rush, so you can take as long as you need."

"So, I just wait?" The other girl doesn't look comfortable with that, but she hasn't looked comfortable the entire time. "Um, if you don't mind me asking, where would I be?"

"Here, in the underworld. You can stay here, or - " The way Kiara's eyes twitch makes it very clear that she'd rather be anywhere but here. Or perhaps it's not the location, it's the fact that the very sociable phoenix would be left with only her own thoughts for company. The idea resonates somewhere inside of Calli, bringing up memories of long stretches of time where she was pretty much adrift, and her heart responds before her brain can get a say in the matter. "Or you can come with me, I guess. Immortals have their own section of the Underworld anyways, so, yeah…" Calli trails off, embarrassed, but the way Kiara looks at her with obvious relief makes her feel like it's worth it despite herself. 

Before she can regret making that offer too much, she turns around and pulls her tablet out again. Bringing a recently deceased soul out of the waiting room and into the administrative section of the Underworld is a violation of procedure, but Calli has several millennia of favors built up and phoenixes already break every rule of the place as it is. As long as Kiara doesn't get to meet any dead (well, permanently dead) souls, it should be perfectly fine. She sends a quick message to her sensei about it, tersely detailing her request and the logic behind it. Despite knowing that her reasoning is solid, she's half expecting to be turned down and told to not let her emotions get in the way of her work, but the reply simply contains a single thumbs up emoji, and she lets out an unconscious sigh of relief.   
  
"I'm done. Are you ready?" she asks to the room behind her. 

"Yeah." The phoenix is back on her feet, literally and hopefully metaphorically as well. She's standing a little close and is reaching a hand out to Calli. 

On instinct, Calli's ready with a little bit of banter, some needling about Kiara being that desperate for her hand, but the words die on her lips as she remembers what's going on. "Let's go," she says instead, letting her scythe fade away into the aether. 

She doesn't need to take the hand offered to her to teleport the two of them out, but the gesture will make her feel better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i showed my friend the initial bits of writing i did for this she said "this sounds like something a madoka fan would make" and i've never been so called out in my entire life.


	2. Chapter 2

Calli hasn't had any visitors in a long time, and it shows. 

The place is… clean enough, she supposes, but there's definitely a bit of a mess around. She doesn't really  _ use  _ it, so it's more a collection of miscellaneous furniture and electronics than a real home. There is a small area in her room where she does have a presence, her desk crowded by a whole host of monitors, but the rest of the building is essentially unchanged from when she moved in. At least, she thinks it's unchanged. Calli hasn't been back in years, after all.   
  
"Is it really okay for me to stay here?" Kiara asks, looking around almost in awe at the perfectly untouched rooms. Maybe she thinks it's fastidiously maintained, instead.   
  
"It would be worse if you were elsewhere. People might come to the wrong conclusion and try to expel you."    
  
"No, not that. Well, yeah, that would be bad, but is it really okay for me to stay at your place? I mean..." Kiara is looking downright nervous at the prospect of staying in Calli's house, which is yet another new face on her. 

"You don't have anywhere else to stay, and I knew that, and I invited you here anyways. It's fine. Besides, I barely stay here." For a split second, Calli wonders where this bashful Kiara was all those other times when she couldn't stop hitting on her. The one she knew would have absolutely leapt at the opportunity to stay at her "beloved wife's" place and made all sorts of inappropriate advances while doing so. Then, the reason behind that resurfaces in her mind, and she curses at herself for even thinking that.    
  
"I - Okay. Thank you, so much, anyways." Kiara bows deeply, and Calli looks at the ceiling until she comes back up.   
  
"Yeah, uh, it's really not a problem for me," she gets out eventually. "There isn't that much to do here, though, so you'll have to find something yourself."    
  
"What do you do, then?"    
  
Calli pauses for a long time. The question is asked innocently enough, but Calli really doesn't like the answer that immediately comes to mind. "I work."    
  
"But like, outside of that?" Kiara's face says that she thinks she knows what's coming next, but doesn't want to believe it.    
  
"I, uh, work." There's a palpable silence as the sentence settles into the room.   
  
"Do you not take breaks? Or like, have a hobby that isn't reaping souls?" Kiara asks, more forcefully this time.

"Death waits for no one." The platitude doesn't seem to placate Kiara, who is now in fact looking indignant at Calli's words. She knows that it's based entirely around concern for her, but the reaper almost physically shrinks back from the phoenix. "... I drink, if that counts?"   
  
That's not the right answer, and Kiara flares up again. "Even if you love your job, you still need time away from it sometimes. If you spend too much of yourself on your work, you'll just burn out! Trust me, I'd - know? Eh? I would?" Her train of thought sputters out, and the anger in her face is replaced with confusion. It's as if she's grasping at something that just barely remains out of reach. Calli's used to seeing her like this, but it's generally not this desperate. 

"Don't push yourself. Your memories will come back in time, and until then it's best to not try and force yourself to remember." It's a piece of advice that Kiara very rarely listens to, and even as she nods in affirmation her eyes are still distant, a sure sign that she's trying to dislodge some more memories of her past. Calli sighs, and returns to the original subject in an effort to stop her. "I do love my work, but I'm also Death's apprentice. I have a lot of duties to uphold, and if I can't no one else can. And I'm not alive, so I don't need to maintain myself in any way."   
  
That seems to get Kiara out of her reverie, at least. "Sure, but mental fatigue still exists!" she says, and Calli can't help but nod along. In her current mode, Kiara has the same energy that some of her past teachers have had, caring yet demanding all the same. "If you make sure to give yourself some time, you can make sure that you're working even better for the rest of the time. Plus, isn't death supposed to be patient?"    
  
"That's - " not what these sayings mean, Calli is about to say, but then she realizes she'd be a hypocrite. "Ugh." She crosses her arms, but can't actually respond to what Kiara's saying, and she knows from long experience that no amount of scowling and grumbling will get her to budge. "You just want me to stay with you, don't you." she mutters instead, just a little too loudly.   
  
"No, no, … no? Wait, maybe I do? Oh, shit, I do - Calliope, I didn't mean to like, pressure you into it or anything, it's just that I really think you should take breaks, just for your own sake. Like, it doesn't have to be now or anything - "    
  
"It's fine, it's fine," Calli says, breaking up her rambling before she can get truly out of hand. Kiara's always been quite the talker, and evidently stays so even under duress. "Honestly, you're being perfectly reasonable, since I was the one who offered. Look, I'll see what I have on my itinerary, and I'll see if I can - uhh… what the fuck?" She trails off, train of thought completely derailed.   
  
Kiara blinks nervously as the silence stretches on, Calli reading and rereading instead of finishing her sentence. "Is something wrong?" 

Wordlessly, Calli flips her tablet around, letting Kiara see it. The phoenix leans in, brow furrowed as she reads. "... Take a break? Is that usually part of an itinerary?"   
  
"No," Calli finally manages to say. "No, it isn't. Much less mine, because there's only one being that could have possibly changed my assignments." She stares down at the tablet in her hand, half-expecting it to vanish into thin air and reveal itself to be some kind of elaborate prank.    
  
Kiara frowns wordlessly as she puzzles through what the flummoxed reaper means. "So, is Death itself giving you a vacation?" she asks.   
  
"I mean, I guess so? Yeah, this is actually happening, isn't it." Given their earlier exchange, Calli can only assume that her sensei knew exactly what they were up to, and had given her pretty much explicit permission to continue instead of doing any number of more Death-like things, like telling her to stop wasting time after already doing a single soul a fairly substantial favor and go handle some other issues. Did that mean they were  _ agreeing _ with Kiara? The thought rankled Calli more than it should have.    
  
"Then what are you going to do?"    
  
Calli takes a deep breath. She expected headaches to come out of every interaction she had with Takanashi Kiara, but she would have never guessed they would come from her boss. "I'm going to partake in my one hobby." 


	3. Chapter 3

"So how does that work, anyways?" Kiara asks.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Your drink."  
  
Calli takes another sip of the liquid in question, enjoying the sensation of it burning as it goes down. "I don't know what you mean."   
  
"I mean, how does the drink work on you? Well, I guess I mean I don't know how your body works, either. Like, does it exist, or is it just some kind of projection?"   
  
"Oh, I understand now. You're wondering how I can get drunk?" Kiara nods, eyes both cautious and curious. The reaper takes a quick check around them before continuing just to make sure there aren't any overzealous reapers going to go after Kiara for being technically alive. Since becoming Death's apprentice, Calli only really frequents places on the outskirts of the Underworld, shunning the constant buzz of attention that she'd get closer to the cities. As such, there's no one around at the moment except for the two of them and the bartender, and he's very much not the type to blab, so she feels fine indulging the question.  
  
"The short answer is that it's just reaper poison instead of mortal poison," Calli says. "Like, human alcohol is made out of grains and stuff distilled until they're intoxicating, right? Reaper alcohol is made out of souls instead, cause life is kind of anathema to us."  
  
Kiara blinks, absorbing the information. "Wait, is that a _person?"_ she asks incredulously.  
  
"Part of one." As the phoenix stares at her, Calli belatedly realizes what the issue is. "Ah, it's not like we're just killing people to get smashed. Souls are constantly replenishing and remaking themselves as people change, and the old bits just get ejected - that's what mortal magic is at its core, even. It's only when they're reaped and come here that the soul as a whole kind of crystallizes into a steady state, and we don't touch them at all after that. The excess isn't used for anything else, so might as well use it ourselves."  
  
"Oh," Kiara says, mostly placated but still confused. "But if everyone in the Underworld is like, just their soul, then what are you? And what is this drink?" she says, pointing at her own drink. She's been drinking much less than Calli has, only partly through her first cup while Calli's already gone through a couple glasses of soul wine. Kiara's trepidation is understandable, though, since she's still unsure of the metaphysics of the scenario.  
  
"That should just be orange soda. Or the idea of it, at least. No one knows which one is really true, and the two possibilities are identical to everyone involved, so it doesn't really matter if it's real or not. If I drank it, it'd taste like nothing at all, so I can't really give you a second opinion or anything like that. We're pretty much just pseudo-physical constructs attached to the concept of death, so it's not like orange soda means anything to us." Predictably, Kiara doesn't fully get what she means, so Calli just shrugs. "Don't worry about that, two-thirds of my colleagues don't get it either. It's complicated."

"Hmm… Well, whatever." Kiara takes another sip of her soda, less hesitantly this time. "It's tasty, so it doesn't really matter. I'm just happy that a bar for reapers had orange soda to begin with instead of only weird soul concoctions, I guess." She blinks, an odd expression on her face as she stirs her drink. "Hey, what do I taste like, then?"  
  
Calli nearly spits out an entire mouthful of concentrated soul. "What the - yo, don't make it weird, Ku- Kiara. Kiara." 

Ignoring Calli's slipup, or perhaps seeing it merely as an effect of the drink, Kiara boldly presses forwards. "Wouldn't you be at least a little curious about it?" The phoenix is utterly, maddeningly sincere about the question, as if she was simply asking Calli about her favorite drink. She would much prefer the line to be Kiara's heavy handed flirting instead, because at least that would be understandable.

"Of course not! What the hell is going through your mind?"   
  
"Come on, I bet I would taste good!" Why did she have an _opinion_ on this already? Calli takes a huge sip, hoping that the question will be revealed to just be something she misinterpreted in a drunken stupor. That hope is dashed when she opens her eyes and Kiara's still just looking at her, eyes shining. "Hey, if you tell me what I taste like, I'll tell you what orange soda is like. How about that?"   
  
"Look, even ignoring that I have no idea how to do it myself, and that you'd have to be alive because the whole point of death is to be a final stable point for the soul and we can only take excess, you're also a phoenix. Every mote of your soul is fundamentally intertwined with life. It'd be like..." The reaper racked her drunk mind for a poison that Kiara's definitely run into before. "It'd be like going from drinking beer to drinking basilisk poison."   
  
"I see…" Kiara looks far too disappointed for someone being told that, no, they wouldn't be made into a drink. Calli squashes any and all sympathy she may or may not feel for the phoenix on account of it being entirely her fault. "Wait, being around me isn't that bad, right? Like, as we are right now."   
  
"I wouldn't be sitting here drinking if it were."   
  
"You know, that's a good point." Kiara finishes that last of her orange soda. With a satisfied sigh, she puts the empty glass back on the counter. Considering it's just a concept, it probably would refill on its own if Kiara thought it worked that way, but her own mind requires her to be given another drink to accept it as real. Still, it's not as if they're in any rush. "You know what? I guess I am dead, right? Might as well get another one. Hey, um, how do I do that?"   
  
The bartender (who, Calli belatedly realizes, she's also never called anything but bartender even in her own head) ambles over, a glass of not quite real orange soda in his hand. "Just gotta ask," he says in his low, wispy tone. "Here you go."   
  
"Woah, you can talk?" Despite her shock, Kiara accepts the glass from him anyways. She always was good at rolling with the punches, after all.   
  
"Sure can. Just don't, most of the time."   
  
"I mean, like, I didn't even think you had a mouth. Sorry, but I actually thought you were some kind of weird magic construct that served drinks." The phoenix peers at the bartender intently, and Calli finally figures out what Kiara's hung up on. Now that she thinks about it, it's obvious that a sentient bundle of loosely attached crystalline cords arranged almost like a wire frame isn't something Kiara's likely to have come across, even with her dimensional travel. Calli takes the opportunity to mentally kick herself for being stupid.   
  
The bartender imitates a shrug, sending ripples through his body. "I am a weird magic construct, but serving drinks is only my hobby. Everyone down here's in the business of reaping souls - everyone but you, I'd think." His low voice is tinged with amusement at the situation, sounding a little like if wind chimes could laugh at you, and Calli's embarrassment only grows. She ducks out of speaking by taking another swig of her drink, but she can't escape the conversation.   
  
"Y-yeah. Um, that's not an issue or anything, right?"   
  
"You've got the apprentice of Death herself sitting next to you, you know? If there was an issue, you'd have never gotten this far. Miss Mori doesn't mess around when she's on the job."   
  
"Which is always." Kiara shoots an offended look at Calli, who merely huffs in the opposite direction. She can already hear her lecture on how other reapers clearly are taking time for themselves, and it's giving her a headache. Or maybe that's the alcohol speaking.   
  
"Exactly. Clearly it isn't messing with things too too much. I am curious as to why a phoenix is in the reaper only section of the Underworld, but there's a reason my bar's all the way out here and not in one of the big cities." The bartender gives her a refill too, and she slams down half of it immediately. He's wise enough to not say anything too smug in front of Kiara, but his top loop of crystals shines a little, and she growls to herself again.   
  
"I wouldn't know, but I'll take your word for it!" The two share a laugh at that, and something weird happens to Calli's chest, and she frowns. Maybe she had drank too quickly after all. 

The conversation peters down a bit after that one, but Calli can tell it won't be for long. Kiara hates silence with a passion; she can already feel her shifting back and forth, searching for some topic to start a conversation. She resolves herself to enjoy the silence while it lasts.  
  
...  
  
Her hands are already itching to check her tablet. Calli is indeed a stubborn individual, because you have to be to get to where she is, but even she has to admit that Kiara has a point. That being said, she chooses to give the credit to Death instead for directly pushing her away from her work.   
  
She's still trying to figure out how exactly to avoid the conclusion that the phoenix helped her out when the real deal finally speaks her mind. "Hey, um, Miss Mori. I want to thank you again." She sounds serious, so Calli brings her full attention to her.   
  
"You've said that more than enough, I think."   
  
Kiara shakes her head. "I don't know if I could say it enough, honestly. There's still so much I don't remember, but I know enough to know that something bad happened to me, right? If you'd left me alone and kept on doing important reaper stuff, I would probably still be stewing in that room, stuck in a loop of negative thoughts. Instead I'm having a good time in a bar, drinking orange soda, learning about whatever weird physics the Underworld has, and meeting people I didn't even think could exist." At the oblique mention, the bartender stops sorting bottles in the back to wave a single emerald coil at Kiara, who nods in acknowledgement before continuing. "You had every reason to not help me, right? I'm immortal so I have all the time I could ever need to figure stuff out, and I probably cause you all a bunch of headaches if you have to handle me personally, and you're also insanely busy anyways."   
  
"I wouldn't just leave you there - "   
  
"Right, because you're a good person. So I want to thank you." Kiara interrupts her, and Calli shuts her mouth again. She's really glad right about now that her body isn't real, because otherwise … well, it'd be a bad thing.   
  
Her tablet pulses in its storage dimension, and Calli seizes the opportunity to escape, pulling it out and checking the message. "Sorry, I should take this." It's only been five minutes since she admitted that she had a work problem, and she's already back at it.   
  
Kiara was about to continue on, but immediately shifts to objecting strenuously. "But you're on vacation! Seriously, you need to learn how to take breaks properly."   
  
"I know. I just need to _tell_ everyone else that I'm taking a break. It doesn't exactly happen often." With that, Calli stands up, making purposeful strides to the door (and ignoring any squawks of protest that may or may not have come out of Kiara while doing so). She brings up her tablet, and sighs deeply, flicking through the messages. It's a rather sobering sight - quite a few reapers she's somewhat close to simply didn't believe Death when they said Calli was taking a break, and thus have sent messages asking if something's wrong, or if she's feeling alright. There's apparently even rumors going around that she's gotten in trouble for one stupid thing or another, or maybe that she has a secret assignment completely outside the normal jurisdictions of death. Was it really so difficult to believe that she's just taking a break?   
  
… In retrospect, it absolutely is. _As hard as it is to believe, I am taking a short vacation_ , she writes a dozen times in reply. _Thank you for your concern._ She exhales, gathering herself, then steps back into the bar, where Kiara has struck up another conversation with the bartender, her half-drunk orange soda forgotten on the counter. 

As soon as she enters, the phoenix abandons her thread of conversation to spin over and wave. "Miss Mori! Is everything handled?"   
  
Calli nods, dropping herself back into her seat. "Yeah. Just a couple people worried about me, that's all."   
  
"They didn't believe that you were taking a break, huh?" The reaper suppresses the urge to cuss her out by returning to her drink, and Kiara takes the ensuing silence as confirmation. "Thought so."   
  
"Oi." Calli glares daggers at her. "Don't you start with me." Intimidating Kiara literally never works, but she keeps on trying anyways. At the very least, she needs to keep her image up in front of the rest of the Underworld.   
  
"I'll start with you as many times as I need to until you start taking better care of yourself." Kiara hmphs, then turns back to the bartender. "Sorry, sorry, where was I?"   
  
"You were talking about how cute my boss's boss's boss is." The bartender is clearly distancing himself from the gushing phoenix with his words, but Calli definitely feels the smugness rolling off of him. She makes a mental note to finally learn his name, if only to do some acts of petty retribution later.   
  
Kiara's eyes light up, and she turns back to the bartender. "Oh yeah! At first I thought she was kinda scary and intense, but she's actually so nice -"   
  
"You know, I'm right here - " Calli tries to get in a word edgewise, but Kiara simply steamrolls through her.

"- and honestly, that contrast in and of itself is really cute, but then it feels like she gets embarrassed about her own actions - "   
  
"Hey, Kiara - " She's raising her voice now, but it doesn't even seem to matter.   
  
"- and that just makes it even better, right? It's like she doesn't want to admit that she's actually really helpful, so she tries to cloak it, but it doesn't quite work, so - "   
  
Finally, she's had enough. "Oi, Kusotori, shut the _fuck_ up!" she yells, and Kiara thankfully does so. Unfortunately, from the look of realization in her eyes, Calli can tell she's just lost the war to win the battle. 

"Kusotori? That means, like, shit bird right? That's my nickname, right?"   
  
Calli ignores her, taking a long, long swig of her drink instead.   
  
She's beaming now. Fuck. "That's me! I just knew you liked me."   
  
Calli sighs, looking decidedly away from Kiara and at the only other thing of note in the otherwise spartan bar, the bartender. Even despite not having much in the way of modular features, he looks like he's never going to fully respect Calli again. "You have an interesting companion there, don't you?"   
  
The reaper looks back at said companion, who even now is rocking back and forth in chair in happiness, clasping her face as if she doesn't quite believe it. "This was a mistake," she grumbles to no one in particular.   
  
The bartender chuckles, wind chimes filling the air. "I, for one, enjoy the extra business," he says. Calli glares at him too, but it does nothing. Maybe she should practice. "Still, though, you have to admit there's something about having company. Not many things are sadder than drinking alone, after all."   
  
She's drank way too many at this point, but she still gets him to refill her glass. Maybe, she thinks to herself. "Enough of that," she says out loud, staring at her drink. Maybe… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know how this happened, but the world building kind of got way out of hand, and now I have all this on my hands? Um, yeah. 
> 
> Also, if Ina were there, it would have taken her three seconds for her to start calling all the drinks spirits, but the Underworld is a little more straight laced of a place.

**Author's Note:**

> when i showed my friend the initial bits of writing i did for this she said "this sounds like something a madoka fan would make" and i've never been so called out in my entire life.


End file.
